The 3 Keys To Relationship Building That Separate Mediocre Leaders From The Brightest And Best

Jack Zenger
, ContributorI write about leadership development and building strengths.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

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Humans are hard wired to connect. They are social creatures that crave friendship and positive interactions with others. As much as we yearn for these interactions, however, many of us struggle to be good at building relationships. But why? To gain more clarity, my colleague Joe Folkman and I looked at our data to discover the key elements to developing positive relationships both within and outside of work.

There are three items we use to measure relationships:

1. Balancing results with a concern for others’ needs,

2. Being trusted by other members of the work group

3. Staying in touch with issues and concerns of individuals in the group.

Our data showed that leaders who excelled in these areas were able to develop more positive relationships and in turn significantly improve employee engagement, retention, and discretionary effort.

However, there is a much deeper meaning and importance beyond those key success indicators. Relationships fill important human needs for belonging and for providing a sense of purpose. They add overall meaning to work.

As employees at every level can attest, when work has a purpose, their lives have greater purpose as well. The research is clear that physical and mental health improve when people are part of a well-functioning group.

This topic has gained greater importance in the past few decades as the nature of organizations has been transformed. The nature of the relationships that made a traditional hierarchy function well is dramatically different from the culture that allows a flat network and team-based organization to operate well.

Relationships In Traditional Organizations

In the steep pyramids of times past, there was a premium on relationships that were defined by the hierarchy. These relationships succeeded when people knew and functioned in a contented way within their appropriate roles. People at lower levels learned to be responsive and take direction, while those in managerial roles learned the importance of providing clear direction to subordinates.

In a steep hierarchy relationships tended to be more distant and formal. This in turn led to leaders being encouraged to maintain a distance between themselves and subordinates.